Shen, Yinmo, born in Zhejian, China, was a renowned poet and calligrapher at the beginning of Republic of China. Shen was a central figure of New Cultural Movement initiated in 1910s (a movement supported democracy as well as science and was opposed against Confucianism). He established a deep friendship with other movement supporters like Duxiu Chen (1879-1942, a distinguished scholar and anti-imperial activist). Shen became interested in theories of calligraphy in his late life. To promote calligraphy, he founded the first calligraphy organization in Shanghai, China in 1961.

This Shen’s calligraphic project is collected by Mianzhong Yang. Shen extracted Yu Lu’s (Wuguan Lu, 1125-1210) work, “Little Garden”, a set of four seven-character poems. The work is very rare and valuable because it was completed and preserved during Chongqing anti-Japanese War Period (at the end of 1930s). I wrote down this note in particular in memory of Shen. Tse Tsung Chow noted at Madison, Wisconsin, on April 22nd, 2004.